


Certainty

by JetnessAffliction



Category: Gundam SEED
Genre: Canon Universe, Character Study, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23036314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JetnessAffliction/pseuds/JetnessAffliction
Summary: Set early in Season 1, just as the Archangel is making a break for Earth's atmosphere and Kira Yamato has just fought off the ZAFT team to cover it's path. The DUEL has just shot down a civilian shuttle. Kira is making the journey most Gundam protags have to do at one nerve-wracking point in their narrative-- the solo atmosphere entry.Mu La Flaga has watched over too many soldiers to count, why should this kid be any different?
Relationships: Mu La Flaga/Kira Yamato
Kudos: 6





	Certainty

The Earth lurched menacingly at Kira Yamato, defying all laws of physics. What was moments ago a crystal and blue sea obscured by brilliant canon fire and stray debris had now become an unstoppable tide of red, merciless solar radiation. The tide assaulted the GATx105 strike and its adolescent pilot, drowning the two in heat. Within the cramped cockpit, alarm sirens were wailing, overlapping each other with the creaking of Strike’s joints, bombarding Kira’s ears with their warnings that a threshold had been reached. It was now, according to calculations, time to panic. The radiation was overheating and forcing steaming uncertainty into his flight suit’s helmet as sweat vaporized almost the same moment it escaped Kira’s skin. But it wasn’t the instant wall of humidity or the turbulence rocking him in place that stopped Kira’s nerves from connecting to his brain, dried his throat, kept the carbon dioxide in his lungs, or locked his heart in its last motions. It wasn’t even the fear that did all that-- it was the sudden certainty. 

This was death, certain and scientific. He had fought, he had failed and now he would die. 

Kira would be erased from existence in the same amoral and simple fashion that the molecules in a drop of water seamlessly rejoined those of the air around it. If soldiers like him were allowed to go to heaven, perhaps he would be able to apologize to that little girl on the shuttle. He’d turn the clothes on his back into a paper flower and offer it up as amends to their violently extinguished innocence. Kira’s brain would not allow him to consider an alternative; it was busy enough preparing him for the facts as they were. The sirens slowly muted. His feet braced against the jammed pedals and his fingers tightened around the limp control sticks. His mother’s grieving face flashed before his eyes. Then the red and the noise gave way to black silence.

For a short, undisturbed moment, there was no need to continue fighting.

When the moment passed, Kira opened his eyes, making out bright halogen panels and a faint blonde-haired figure in his periphery.

“Kira!” 

The older man’s voice registered almost instantly. Did this mean the Archangel had followed him to the afterlife? “Unbelievable! You’re awake,” Major Mwu La Fllaga’s wry grin quickly melted into a laugh and sigh of genuine relief. “You are one tough kid!”

“What happened? Where am I?” Kira asked weakly, timidly, not sure if angels would approve of him adding to the Major’s loud commotion. He attempted to move his body, but found it wouldn’t obey without causing a dull ache to echo through all his muscles. He could feel sweat still drying all over his body, as if he were still in the flight suit, and not neatly tucked between thin sheets of white cotton.

“Hey hey, take it easy,” Mwu gently placed his hand on Kira’s chest, urging him to lie back down. “You’re back here with everyone on the ship” he explained. “You were unconscious for days with a high fever. I—we, were all worried. But you pulled through.” After settling the boy, Mwu’s hand wandered absently to Kira’s forehead. The large palm gently brushed back thin, brown hair that had been matted to the skin with sweat. Kira suddenly found it easier to breathe. The dull ache in his muscles disappeared, also brushed aside by that simple, tender gesture.

Kira was waiting for one more confirmation to make it certain. Why was he, a clumsy and guilty group of molecular bonds, still existing unchanged, able to take comfort in the Major’s defiantly clear blue eyes and untroubled smile? He kept staring, on the verge of tears with uncertainty. “I’m alive?” He risked his own existence. If Mwu said so, then all natural laws of biology and physics, even death itself, had no chance.

“Well you’re not dreaming, Kiddo.” Mwu drew his hand back and jokingly pinched Kira’s right earlobe to prove it. He also did it to distract himself. If he looked any longer into Kira’s watery and strained eyes he would crumble into tears himself to save Kira the trouble. Instead, Mwu sat further back in the chair beside Kira’s bed and tried to show the kid the most approving and encouraging face he could muster. “We were worried, but the captain believed in the Strike and your friends believed in you. And as for me-- well I believed in the impossible, of course” he laughed. “Yeah, you’re alive. We all are.”

Those were the words Kira needed to hear. Despite the odds, they had all made it through reentry. They were all home, together, on Earth. Kira closed his eyes and smiled, letting the few tears waiting there fall, cooling his face. “Thank you, Major..” He managed to whisper before quickly wiping the wet trails of relief of away, slightly embarrassed.

“No, it’s all thanks to you and the Strike, Kiddo.” Mwu stood up and squeezed Kira’s smaller, more fragile hand once before turning toward the door. “I’ll go get the doctor, you just sit back and relax. Conserve your energy and get well as soon as possible.” He said it so firmly it was almost an order.

Kira lay still, obedient, breathing in the natural oxygen that filled the room with deep, enthusiastic breaths. 

When the Major had stepped outside the infirmary he could only take two more steps before his body slumped against the nearest bulkhead. His own relief was tinted with uneasy fear and moral lead. The Archangel’s cold, metal frame supported him as his thoughts reeled out, unraveling themselves from the tense net of his worries. 

That was a close one, the battle-weary veteran admitted to himself. Kira was, for almost three straight days, completely out of commission. It was a miracle itself that enemy forces, no doubt just over the western or northern sand dunes, held their hands even this long. Even worse, there had been signs that Kira’s body would collapse from of the intolerable amounts of heat it absorbed within the prototype’s cockpit. Mwu had seen many of his comrades –all of them good, honest young men— become scattered bits along with their own government issued metal coffins right before his eyes. There were so many faces he could imagine gravitating to the debris belt that he couldn’t count them. His heart turned to stone the first time he urged the innocent, untrained and unknowing Kira into battle with him. When the Strike’s signal was momentarily lost above the Earth he felt cracking deep inside him where the memory of unfair horrors of the war met, reached a zenith, and plunged straight to his core. But that was only a close one, Mwu repeated to himself. It was just a routine brush with death and not death itself. He lifted his body off the bulkhead and began slowly stepping forward toward the doctor’s quarters. He trailed his fist against the ship’s frame to ground himself.

The crack was only a false alarm. Tomorrow it would be as if the last few days had never happened. All that mattered, Mwu sternly reminded himself, was that Kira was alive. Kira was going to be fit in no time. He would force Kira into the Strike again. Soon. Of course, he was going to work damn hard to make sure there were no more “close calls,” but he would be the one pushing Kira toward the enemy’s fangs and fire. He was prepared to do it. Even if it killed him to do so, he’d do it. That much was certain, and that was all.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published some time in 2005 or 2006. I have always been a sucker for the older-brother type military man and The New Kid. This fic isn't romantic, but this was my main OTP at the peak of my Seed fandom.


End file.
